


Anchors in Space

by MarchofBirds



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Fluff, Implied Sibling Incest, Introspection, Light Angst, M/M, No Dialogue, Threesome - F/M/M, could be read as platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-05 01:04:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14032767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarchofBirds/pseuds/MarchofBirds
Summary: Luke reflects on the relationships he shares with the two people he can't let go of.





	Anchors in Space

**Author's Note:**

> Super-sappy is a lil out of my wheelhouse but I'm giving it a go.

The thing about Leia was that for every one thing Luke discovered about her that he’d expected there were always two or three he never saw coming. She was great at improvising, no matter the situation: that one he’d expected. That she could go drink-for-drink with Han Solo with barely a twinkle of mischief in her eyes while he was passed out under the table, less so. The fact that she could conjure up the most ridiculously complex hairstyles in under an hour while barely looking at a mirror didn’t surprise him. The way she left her hair ties and pins, as well as her shoes and jackets and whatever paperwork she’d been studying recently, lying around the house in teetering piles at the end of the day, did.

Leia was loud and messy and vulgar in ways that no one who didn’t know her as well as he did would expect. Luke had met a lot of people as a pilot in the rebellion, and many more after as the last Jedi. But he’d never met anyone like Leia. She was so composed, so in-control, so _regal_ , until she wasn’t. Then she was all barely-contained force and power, so strong he was surprised she hadn’t felt it in herself years ago.

 

Where Leia had a steel core Han was all softness. Not that he’d ever admit to it. Han had learned in the years since they’d first met to be more patient, more reliable, even to allow himself to show a hint of vulnerability from time to time. But there would always be something undeniably wild about him that Luke wouldn’t change for the galaxy. And no matter how much she rolled her eyes and huffed at him, Luke was convinced Leia loved that about him just as much as he did.

Han’s hands, like the rest of him, were rough and usually dirty. They spent most of their time wrapped around a blaster or buried in the innards of the _Falcon_. But when he held something that mattered, they lived in feather-light touches like he’d broken a thing or two too many and was afraid of really holding on. And his eyes- they almost sang with adoration. He never could seem to mask the emotion that practically poured from them, no matter what claims he made about his flawless sabacc face.

 

Han and Leia were as different as they were similar, Luke reflected. Both were made up of contradictions that shouldn’t make any sense in a single person but somehow did. Outwardly, he was as gruff and tactless as she was kind and gentle. But when Han loved he did it with everything he had. He wasn’t much for dramatic declarations but Luke knew he’d face down an army singlehandedly for the few people he called family. Leia, on the other hand, wasn’t half as deadly with a blaster as she was with her words- and she was a pretty damn good shot. Luke had found himself on the wrong end of her temper enough times to know that she was just as adept at cutting people down as she was at building them up. When he glimpsed the shades of the ruthlessness he knew her to be capable of shine through, he thanked the maker she was on their side.

Luke instinctively knew that he was what held the two of them together. Through his training he’d learned to cultivate patience and master control. And maybe the Jedi never intended for their teachings to be used to hold two of the galaxy’s biggest personalities together; he distinctly remembered Yoda forbidding attachment once or a dozen times. Luke ruminated and meditated and weighed his options before he figured, hells with it. There was no one left to forbid him from doing anything. He was the last and, perhaps from a certain point of view, the first and he would find his own way. The quiet confidence his training had instilled in him made him the calming influence the two of them needed to stay in balance. Luke had changed a lot over the years but one thing remained the same: when Han and Leia needed him, he would be there.

And maybe, when he was alone and couldn’t quite find the tranquil mindset that allowed him to tap into the force, he could admit that he needed them just as much. The two of them were steadying weights in his life as much as he was in theirs. Without them it was just him, the force, and the wide empty galaxy. And maybe that’s what the Jedi would’ve wanted, maybe the entire galaxy should’ve been enough for him. But it wasn’t.

Han and Leia reminded him of the things about Tatooine that had made it the home that wasn’t really there to go back to anymore. Like the twin suns he was raised under, the two of them burned bright and hot enough to chase away any lingering darkness the war had left behind. They were warm and familiar in all the ways that mattered and when he spent too long meditating, or tracking down Jedi lore, or getting lost wherever his training took him, they were always there to bring him back.

Luke almost wanted to feel guilty sometimes, thinking of how all the Jedi of the past lived, how much they sacrificed. But then something would shift, and he knew he didn’t have it in him. Like when they’d visited a planet that Leia said reminded her so much of Alderaan she kept expecting her parents to show up. They held her while she shed silent tears in mourning for the half of her family that wasn’t his.

Or when one year, on the anniversary of his aunt and uncle’s deaths, he came home to find a smell so familiar his knees almost buckled. Luke had no idea how he’d done it but somehow Han tracked down and recreated something strikingly similar to one of Aunt Beru’s most often-used recipes. He walked in the kitchen to find three place settings, glasses of blue milk and all, and Han hovering by the stove looking a little sheepish. Beru never was much of a cook and, truth be told, neither was Han. But as Luke, Han, and Leia were gathered around the table, he swore it was the best thing he’d tasted in years.

 

So Luke accepted that he would never be a proper Jedi in the classical sense of the term. But he’d come to understand that the universe wasn’t split into only light and dark, and sacrifice came in many different forms. He’d called a Jedi “ _master_ ” but in the two people he refused to cut ties with, he’d learned that some attachments could only ever serve to keep him from drifting away.  


End file.
